Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! – Season One (Cartoon Network/Warner DVD)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: B- Episodes: B-
As with
many series on Cartoon Network’s Adult
Swim, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great
Job is pure nonsense; granted that nonsense is hysterically funny at
times. The series was created by Tim
Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, the same duo that brought the world Tom Goes to Mayor, a series that this
reviewer personally loathed. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job embodies the comic teams same sense of
incoherent, nonsensical, absurd banter but in a form that the chaos is much
better than Tom Goes to Mayor ever
was; it couldn’t have been any worse!
The format for Tim and Eric
Awesome Show, Great Job is one that utilizes musical numbers, sketches, and
mock commercials to contain their comic insanity.
The
series also uses a plethora of celebrity cameos throughout the sketches
including Paul Reubens, Fred Willard, David Cross, and many more. Other celebrities have become regulars to the
series such as John C. Reilly as a fake news correspondent from Channel 5, Dr.
Steve Brule, and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic as a cable access variety show host. The series has featured such outrageous
sketches as the Cinco Company that makes random products like a machine that
turns imaginary fears into real ones and The
Uncle Muscles Hour which features Tim and Eric as singing and dancing
brothers who end their performance with vomiting and/or weeping.
That best
way to describe the series is to say it is ‘out there…way, way out there.’ This reviewer is in no way, shape, or form is
in love with Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job but in some acid
trippy manner it is in the same vein as classic Saturday Night Live, Upright
Citizens Brigade, or even Kids in the Hall. If nothing else we
can call the series creative and pleasantly absurd. Whereas Tim
and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job is not for the closed minded, weak
stomached, or easily irked many others will find the odd duo’s sense of humor
enticing and strangely hilarious.
The
technical features on this 1-disc set are just as odd as the show itself. The picture quality is all over the place
(intentionally) in its 1.66 X 1 full screen format and goes from odd coloring,
to grainy picture, to blurriness, to everything in between. If you can see through the intended chaos of
the picture quality, it is actually quite nice and is better than can be viewed
on cable or on the internet. The sound
quality is on more solid ground in its Dolby Digital 5.1 Surrounds, sounding
very fluid and smooth with only the occasional rough, grittiness that this
reviewer is more than sure was intentional.
The extra features are equally wacky as the series offering fans such
special features as How’d Day Do Dat??, Lost Gems and Deleted Scenes,
Awesomcon, Oops and Ding Dongs, Promos, Great (But Not Great Enough): Extended
Scenes and Missing Moments. Besides the
aforementioned ‘making of’ material and deleted scenes, Tim and Eric (in character)
do an excellent job of offering commentaries for all ten episodes featured in
this first season set.
This
series is by no means for everyone and in fact this reviewer had personally
passed by the series on television countless times. Before viewing the series on DVD this
reviewer felt the series was the same disgusting dribble that was Tom Goes to Mayor and whereas this
reviewer could still do without about twenty percent of the sketches, the
series becomes very amusing once you open your mind to the insanity. Call me crazy, but Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job is the perfect dose of
madness.
- Michael P Dougherty II
